They were having a good night, a really good night. Noah was away at a weekend dance camp, so Olivia invited Elliot over for Chinese take-out and to hang-out (as the kids call it nowadays). He showed up grinning in one of his now ever present long-sleeve Henley's and a bottle of red in each hand. They sat next to each other on the couch, a random Netflix special was muted in the background, and the conversation flowed effortlessly between bites of food and glasses of wine. It was almost as if an entire decade had not passed since they last done this.
But as Olivia was sharing some anecdote about Fin and Amanda from the week before … "and then Fin got a look, you know his look, and said…" she noticed that Elliot's goofy, happy-go-lucky smile had turned to confusion, setting there with his brows knit for a few moments, and then to rage. She watched wide-eyed and slack-jawed as he got up from the couch without warning and stomped into the kitchen.
She followed him, "El, wh…" when she heard his plate clatter against the bottom of the sink. If that man broke one of my plates…
While Olivia was filling him in on the recent SVU antics, she missed Elliot's wandering eyes. Subtly he tried to take in her apartment throughout the night: the soft, welcoming colors; the books on her shelves; a candle flickering; potted plants - those have to be fake; and the pictures on the walls and on the end table behind her. He'd smiled at what appeared to be Noah's most recent school photo and a photo of Liv with her squad, but it had to have been several years old because there was a younger man in the photo he didn't recognize.
Then his eyes flitted to a third photo. It was in a smaller frame and half hidden behind the other two. He squinted to try to see what was in the frame. He saw two figures, one with flowing brown hair - must be Liv - who was standing next to a man - a gray-haired man. He squinted again. The man had blue eyes, maybe, and a rugged, lined face. Confusion was further cemented on his face as Elliot thought he recognized the man.
Is that? No, it couldn't be. Why would Liv have a photo of her and Tucker?
Tucker, Ed Tucker…"and then Ed died…" OH. HELL. NO!
His anger boiled over in him before he had a chance to realize it and knew he had about half a second to leave the room or he was going to explode. So, he grabbed his plate and stormed into the kitchen. The wrapper of his fortune cookie falling from the dish and floating to the floor peacefully in juxtaposition to Elliot's quick and aggressive walk.
He heard her follow him, whisper his name "El," but he couldn't, he couldn't even look at her. He felt betrayed. He was furious. Tucker? Motherfuckin' Ed Tucker? Why? How? No! Don't think of how!
"El," he hears her repeat.
"When the hell were you going to tell me?" He grinds out, his back is still to her and his hands gripping the edge of the skin. She can see the whites of his knuckles. Or punches a hole in my cabinets…
"El…" She says more firmly, but still calmly enough not to add to the situation.
"No Liv, don't do that, don't 'El' me right now." He finally turns to face her and points a finger in her face. "You kept this from me! You knew I'd hate it, and you kept it from me." He's on a roll now. "Were you ever going to tell me? Tell me that 'Ed,' your special, 'there was one' Ed, was goddamn Ed Tucker? Christ! You were with Tucker?"
"I don't," her voice, quiet and steady, the tone she regularly took on to talk people down from an emotional ledge, "I just, I don't know El," she takes a step towards him, lightly brings his hand down from eye level, "we have so much to work through, to talk about. I …wasn't sure…when…how…" she trails off.
If she was honest with herself, she knew this was coming and that it should probably have already happened. But how the hell was he supposed to tell him that the one man - the one man Elliot hated almost as much as perps; the man who made Elliot's life (and her life for a while) a living hell; the man who, she knew, had played at least a small part in Elliot's retiring after Jenna - was the man she loved, had loved her and her son, and that she still grieved his loss?
Elliot was not satisfied with that answer.
"Tucker, Liv! Ed-IAB-rat-pain-in-our-asses-TUCKER!" His fist bangs on the counter, rattling her clean drink ware, as he spits the last name out like poison.
He was starting to piss her off now. She knew he was mad, and she understood it, but he was still a grown man and he was beginning to throw a tantrum to rival's Noah's terrible twos.
If he throws a damn glass like a child… "I know who he was Elliot!" She starts to fight back.
"HE ARRESTED YOU!" Elliot shouts, hands thrown up and slammed back down.
Like I could forget that. "I KNOW, I was there!" She's breathing hard now, her calm tone long lost. She was furious now too. Walking Elliot back from his emotional ledge be damned.
"I can't believe this, you…you…how could you…" His finger is back in her face.
Oh no! Don't you dare put this on me. "Stop! Right there Elliot." She demands and slaps his hand away from her face, now pointing her own finger, "You better think long and hard about what words are about to come tumbling out of your mouth."
She takes a deep breath, lowers her finger, and continues through gritted teeth, "Because you are not thinking right now, and you are gonna say something you will regret."
His mouth opens and closes a couple times, trying to decide whether it's worth it to say what's on his mind. He decides it's not and forces his lips together tightly, his eyes still glazed over in fury and focused on her. She would have laughed if she wasnt so mad, she could damn near see the anger rolling off his shiny bald head. But that mental humor distracted her enough to calm her nerves.
"Elliot, you have two choices right now." She turns from him, starting to leave the kitchen. "You can either calm down and listen to what I have to say, or" she points to the front door, "you can leave."
A little dumbfounded, he huffs "leave," followed by a "what?"
"That's right. Shut up and listen or leave." She exits the kitchen and returns to the couch, calling back, "Those are your only options, and right now, I don't care which one you choose."
He doesn't have a choice, not a real one anyway. He might be angry with her, completely irate, but he doesn't want to leave. He knows in the back of his mind that if he ever chooses to leave, even just for a night or even for five minutes to walk around the block, that she may never let him back in. And he desperately wants in.
He takes her advice and tries to calm down. He takes a few deep breaths - I hate how this therapy, breathing bullshit actually works. He grabs a glass from her cabinet, fills it with cool tap water, and chugs it down.
He needs a moment. He is going to have to listen to her without shouting and he needs a moment before he can do that.
Eventually he joins her on the couch. She is sitting to one side, angled towards the middle with her legs tucked up under a blanket and she's scrolling through her phone. Without looking up "you've made up your mind, have you?" Her tone is still calm but now a little icy.
I deserve that, I guess. "Liv, look, I'm so…"
"Save it. I don't want your apologies." She leans forward and places her phone next to her half-drunk wine glass, "I'm so sick of you acting first and being sorry later. Your guilt riddled confessions don't work on me. I'm not going to ask you for two Hail Mary's and an act of contrition."
His head snaps back a little and he eyes her with disbelief. She's not holding back, I guess I should've known, she never minced her words before. He keeps his mouth shut though, heeding her early warning. She still might kick him out.
"I didn't know how to tell you, Elliot. I just didn't. I knew I should, and I knew I should do it soon, but the words were hard to find and we…" she waves her hands between them, "we've struggled to find a good place since you've come back. And now that we are here, I didn't want to mess us up with this conversation."
He nods, a little surprised at her honesty and acknowledgement of the situation, and of them. He has a lot he wants to say: reassure her that they are in a good place; apologize for acting out when blinded by his grief; not trusting her with his PTSD; and then relying on her so much with Eli. But now's not the time.
"I knew you would be angry, feel betrayed, jealous," he scoffs. "Oh, don't deny it, Elliot, you are about as subtle as a raging bull." She huffs out a laugh. "And I knew this conversation wasn't going to be easy. It's going to bring up a lot, a lot of emotions and memories and feelings, and I wasn't sure I was ready…ready to go there with you yet. I'm not really happy to be doing it now."
"Liv…" He's dying to touch her, just touch her knee or something. He knows that this is going to be painful and he's so tired of hurting her.
"No, El." She stops him, "I need you to listen. I'm going to explain, but you cannot interrupt." She eyes him, her brown eyes serious and asking for his assent.
"Okay, I will listen." Most of the remaining anger has already left his body and he sinks back into the couch waiting for her to continue.
She takes a deep breath, steadies herself, calling up all her gumption, but looks away from him. She can't look at him now, this is going to hurt. It's going to hurt her and it's going to hurt him.
"You left Elliot."
Ouch, she's starting there?
"After 12 years of partnership, of friendship - we were best friends - you left me. No note, no letter, no voicemail, not even a goddamned carrier pigeon. Nothing. You were the longest standing relationship I had with anyone, not just a man. I relied on you. You were my family; your children were my family. You were all I had. And you just left."
She inhales slowly and exhales shakily. "I was shattered. Teeny, tiny pieces of me were scattered on the floor, everywhere." He can see the tears starting to well in her eyes and he wasn't fairing much better.
"But," she goes on, "I managed. I struggled through the grief of losing you. I accepted that I'd never see or hear from you again, and I started to move on. It took months El, I suffered your loss - a giant hole in my heart, my soul - for months and months." He watches a lone tear break rank and roll down her face.
He gets up from the couch, putting a finger up, letting her know that he'll return. That he's not leaving. She keeps her eyes on him, watching him grab a couple tissues from across the room and walk back to the couch. He sits closer when he returns, cutting the distance between them.
"Thanks," she mutters as she daps at her eyes with the tissue.
"When I finally pulled through, when everything was starting to look up, like I had made it through the worst of it… well…it got even worse." She pauses, swallows, she really didn't want to talk about this right now. "A couple years after you left, I suffered the worst trauma imaginable."
His eyes open, his head tilts, and she can see the questions running through his mind.
How can he not know? She questions when she sees his eyes. It was all over the news, everywhere. Did he not see? Did no one really tell him? Did Fin not warn him? I thought his children were still in the area?
"I don't want to go into the details now," she's firm, "I can't, not tonight." He nods, but the questioning look remains.
"But, I went through hell. Actual, literal, physical and mental hell. And then for years I suffered. Nightmares, flashbacks, scars - ongoing physical and mental reminders of that horror. They still haunt me from time to time."
"Liv," he reaches out, places his hand on her knee, "it's oka…"
"Stop…don't…" she shakes her head and daps a few more tears, they are on the verge of flowing freely, "I need to get this out."
He swallows hard, and nods again, but he doesn't move his hand. She sighs, his touch has always soothed her, and she needs it now.
"And then again, when things started to look up - getting Noah, promotions, everything - the rug was pulled out from underneath me, over and over."
She thinks of the second round with Lewis, Shelia, Nick, Simon, and of the townhouse. It was just so much stress and heartache and loss and fear.
"Ed was there, Elliot. He already knew everything that happened. He pushed me to move up the ranks, he shared in my joy when I adopted Noah. He was just around. And then…" She's not quite sure how to even put into words what happened, how her and Ed's relationship transpired.
"He was there. And he became this place of safety and calm, a sense of security and peace, in everything. He helped me pick the pieces that were still lagging behind and hold them together."
Another tear falls, but she grins a little, thinking of drinks with Ed at the pub, walks in the park with him and Noah, and of Paris. "And slowly, so slowly, I didn't really even realize it, his calmness and kindness and welcomed presence turned to love. He loved me and Noah, and I fell in love with him."
She can see the disbelief, and maybe a hint of disgust, play on Elliot's face. "I know what you're thinking, but Elliot, he really was a good guy. He treated me and Noah so well. We talked…we talked about everything, cleared the air so to speak. And for some reason, I still don't quite understand it, we worked."
He huffs a bit. Of course you worked, any man would be a fool not to do everything to work with you. I'll do anything, Liv, let me in.
"We did. And he wanted me. He wanted me for forever - more than anyone else has ever wanted with me." She looks down, wipes another tear "more than you wanted me for," she whispers, not really meaning to say it aloud.
"No Liv," Elliot urges, trying to correct her. Shit! "I wanted you, want you…"
She shakes her head, dropping her eyes, allowing a few more tears to hit the blanket over her legs.
"You weren't here El. I hadn't heard from you in years." He knows this. He knows she's right. This is his fault, he was gone. He knows that he never told her how he felt then - he couldn't - and he's not been great at expressing himself now. He's been all over the place and absent, and he even scared her once. He's not been good for her or to her in a very long time.
"You weren't here. So, you don't get to comment on how I picked the pieces you left behind. On how I survived the worst years of my life and fought back. On how I held it all together. You don't get to have an opinion. You," her voice raising a little, her eyes back on his, "do NOT get to be mad. Because you do not have a goddamn clue what I've been through." She breathes in. "And you do not get to judge me for finding love, for being loved. No matter who it was, even Tucker."
He can't keep eye contact with her, he's so ashamed. "Yea," he mutters as he looks away. It was so quiet she almost missed it.
"In the end though, he left me too." More tears fall. "It was my fault." She sniffles, tries to hide a soft hiccup, "I wasn't ready. He wanted to retire and live happily ever after with me and Noah, and I ran scared. I always run scared." The last sentence a whisper, her own regret creeping its way back in.
"No Liv," squeezing her knee and rubbing her thigh, just above her knee, "you are so brave. You have always been so brave, so strong." Tears are forming in his eyes again. How does she not know her own courage, her own strength?
"And then, well, he died," she finished as if she hadn't heard his comment. "He died, and I was left behind to grieve the loss of a man I loved for the second time in ten years."
They sit in silence. He lets her words wash over him, settle deep in his bones, in his heart. The second man she'd loved? Christ, I am an idiot. Elliot sits there, trying to absorb it all, still gently applying pressure to her leg.
He feels like an ass. He exploded in anger and jealousy without a second thought, without even considering her side of it. He stormed out of the room, yelled at her, slammed around her dishes, and hit her countertops. He accused her of maliciously keeping secrets. He's not any better than he was before he left. He's just as impulsive and quick to anger as he's always been.
He's sitting with his guilt - something he's grown accustomed to in his life - when he hears her start again.
"You should be thankful for Ed, El, really."
His head pops up. That's a bit much, Liv, he thinks, I can get over my ego and accept the fact that you loved him, but be thankful for that piece of sh….
"I know what you're thinking, but I'm serious."
He eyes her incredulously.
"It's because of Ed, the relationship we had and the love we shared…"
Ugh, don't rub it in Liv. I'm still a jealous man. And I don't want to upchuck my dinner over thoughts of you together.
"That I was able to accept love. I began to trust myself again, trust relationships again. I saw, experienced really, how people can change, how relationships can evolve," she looks him straight in the eye and lays her hand over his "and learned how sometimes second chances are worth it."
Damn. He sits there, again, in silence. And she lets him. She's glad he's finally heard her and she's gonna let him think on it all for a bit.
A few minutes later, his anger was long gone, but his guilt was still very much present.
"Liv, I know you don't want to hear it," he scoots closer and grabs her hand between both of his, "but I am so sorry. I am sorry for my outburst. You are right, absolutely. I have no room to judge, or comment, or be angry about anything in the last ten years."
His eyes never leave hers, even as tears finally start to streak down his face. "I am so sorry that I left you without a word. That I left you and you suffered so much without me there, with your partner to help you hold it all together. I know that nothing I say or do now will completely heal that pain, that ultimate betrayal. I am so sorry."
He wipes at his eyes, snuffs a bit, and then returns his hand to hers. "But I will work every day to prove to you that I am here, right here and not going anywhere. And to prove that I am worth a second chance, that we, you and I, are worth it."
His words are pouring out now, urging, begging her to believe him.
"I know that I've been cruel to you in my grief and that I demanded so much of your time and care without ever even thinking how you might be doing, I even frightened you in your own home. I can't believe my own actions. And I am sorry for that too."
He brings her hand to his mouth for a quick kiss on her knuckles.
"And even if it was with Tucker," she chuckles at the sour look on his face, "I am happy that you found love and safety and peace," he was listening "and that you weren't alone for all those years, that you had someone."
"Thank you, El." She gives him a sad smile. "And I'm sorr..."
"No Liv. You don't have anything to apologize for. I'm sorry that I demanded this before you were ready to share. You were right," he kissed her hand again.'' We were doing so well, we were in a good place, and I, being the short-tempered buffoon that I am," she nods and chuckles through her last few tears, more like a complete ass, "messed it up. You didn't do anything wrong."
She nods again, "Thank you."
Then the silence returns. Neither are really sure how to continue, what to say or what to do now. So, they sit there, his hands holding hers with his thumb sliding back and forth over her fingers. Her eyes trained on their hands. His on her.
A few minutes pass and Elliot stands up, grabs the remaining dishes on the table in front of them - dinner feels like a lifetime ago - and takes them to the kitchen. She sits and listens to him moving in her kitchen, the sound of the running water, the dishwasher door, the trash can lid, his shuffling feet.
He returns to the living room, wiping his hands on his pants. "Well, it's late" he starts.
"Yeah." She finally stands from the couch.
"I should get going." He thumbs towards the door and makes his way to grab his jacket.
She follows him. She doesn't want him to leave yet. She doesn't want to end the night like this, but it's well after midnight and he has a 35-minute drive. And really there's nothing more to say.
They are standing, awkwardly, next to the front door. He reaches for the knob but pulls his hand back like it burned him.
"Liv." He's facing her now, and moves his hands to grab both of hers, pulling them up to his chest.
"Hmmm?" She steps closer and watches his eyes flit down to her lips and back up to hers.
"I'm really glad you believe in second chances now," he leans in and kisses her cheek, a faint blush forming on his own.
"Me too," she whispers. He lets her hands go, slowly, their fingers dragging against one another, and then he turns and reaches for the door again.
"El," she calls.
"Yea?" His body half turns towards her, hand still on the knob, the door cracked open.
She grabs his face, both hands on his cheeks and presses her lips to his. It's short, chaste, barely even there. But both their hearts are pounding when she pulls back. His eyes wide open. He gulps.
She looks shyly to the ground, half embarrassed about her actions, and mutters, "I think we are worth it, too."
Smiling and biting at the inside of his cheek, he pulls the door all the way open and steps through. "Good night, Liv. I'll call you tomorrow."
"Night, El."
She hears the chain lock slide. This was a good thing, I hope.